Of Tatyana, Comets and Champagne

On January 25, Russians celebrate Tatyana’s Day. Although originally a feast day commemorating the martyrdom of St. Tatyana, the date eventually became associated with students, after an ukaz by the Empress Elizabeth that affirmed the creation of Moscow University (see Russian Calendar, page 17). Elizabeth chose this date to honor Tatyana Shuvalova, the mother of her court favorite, Ivan Shuvalov, a patron of education and the arts (see Russian Life, Nov/Dec 2007).

Russian folk wisdom predicts that any girl born on Tatyana’s name day will end up a good cook, though it’s not clear why, since the saintly Tatyana was thrown to the lions and not known for her culinary prowess. The Russians’ most immediate association with the name Tatyana is the beloved heroine from Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel in verse. This Tatyana is generally considered a kind of saint in relation to the callous Onegin, who lives a carefree bachelor life in St. Petersburg.

Pushkin’s work reveals a good deal about daily life in the first quarter of the 19th century. Of particular interest is Stanza XVI from Chapter One, in which Onegin goes out for a night on the town:

He mounts the sledge, with daylight fading:

“Make way, make way,’’ goes up the shout;

his collar in its beaver braiding

glitters with hoar-frost all about.

He’s flown to Talon’s, calculating

that there his friend Kavérin’s waiting;

he arrives — the cork goes flying up,

wine of the Comet fills the cup;

before him roast beef, red and gory,

and truffles, which have ever been

youth’s choice, the flower of French cuisine:

and pâté, Strasbourg’s deathless glory,

sits with Limburg’s vivacious cheese

and ananas, the gold of trees.

(Translated by Charles H. Johnson)

This stanza offers a wonderful glimpse at the fashionable foods of the era. Talon’s restaurant, where Chef Pierre Talon presided over the kitchens until his return to France in 1825, was a favorite gathering place for young men of Onegin’s means. It stood at No. 15 Nevsky Prospekt. Onegin celebrates at the restaurant by popping the cork of an 1811 vintage Champagne, called “Comet wine,” after the year in which the Great Comet appeared. This comet shone extraordinarily brightly throughout Western Europe, and especially brightly in the fall, just as the grapes were being harvested; the 1811 vintage, considered the nineteenth century’s finest, was said to result from its effect on the weather. Onegin chose knowledgeably and well.

Talon’s menu demonstrates the overriding influence of Western European tastes on 19th-century Russian cuisine. The bloody roast beef is, of course, as symbolically English as possible, while the truffle-scented Strasbourg pie is purely French. Although most English translations, like the one above, render pirog (pie) as pâté, implying that it is foie gras, in fact Pushkin has in mind not pashtet but an actual pie with a sturdy crust that seals in the exquisite aroma of the truffles as they bake with the goose liver. The Limburger cheese is a surface-ripened, cow’s milk cheese from Belgium, notorious for its pungent odor. The meal ends with pineapples, which at that time had been known in Russia for only one hundred years. One 19th-century nobleman was so smitten with this exotic hothouse fruit that he squandered his fortune on it, eating pineapple not only fresh but in specially prepared shchi and borshch. Pineapples remained a symbol of decadent life well into the twentieth century, as we know from Igor Severyanin’s collection of poems, Pineapples in Champagne (Ananasy v champanskom). The Futurists dismissed Severyanin as effete for his celebration of the kind of life that Onegin led.

Today, in 21st-century Russia, more exotic fare has taken the place of pineapples, but champagne is still de rigueur for special occasions. So this January 25, let’s raise a glass to the martyred Tatyana, as well as to the art of fine living!

Russian Champagne

Russian military officers occupying France’s Champagne region after Napoleon’s defeat brought home a taste for sparkling wine, and until 1917 Russia remained France’s second largest champagne export market. In the late nineteenth century, Prince Lev Golitsyn began to produce champagne at his Crimean New World winery; it was so good that russkoye shampanskoye received favorable mention at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the Revolution, Golitsyn’s chief winemaker, Anton Mikhailovich Frolov-Bagreev, worked for the Soviet government and in 1934 perfected a system for fermenting champagne in reservoirs instead of bottles. Thus, champagne for the masses was born. During the 1970s détente, PepsiCo imported Nazdorovya champagne, but the sweet Russian style flopped in the American market. Today, many Russians still enjoy champagne from the Artyomovsk and Kiev Champagne wineries in Ukraine.